I could tell he didn’t belong by his hat. Out of the sea of white head pieces, his dirtied baseball cap stood out like a sore thumb. I could see where the stitching on the rim was splitting open. Big mistake. The Metro Police would be on him in seconds if he didn’t hide it, at least stuff it in a trash bin. Glassdon wasn’t the type of metropolis you could sneak into on a whim, you had to be on your A-game, otherwise it was game over.

In the last couple of years security had only gotten worse around the city, especially since the Chrome heist five years ago. Chrome, Glassdon’s top artificial laboratory, had been ransacked for its most expensive serum. They lost millions of dollars that day, but worse, the Mortars were finally able to get their hands on the product Glassdon people coveted.

They called it Violet, after the gem like hue the serum would take. An accidental discovery made 80 years ago, but somehow, the greatest and most unexplainable scientific finding to exist.

Violet was the magical solution everyone wished they could afford. Whatever was in it, no one knew, but when injected, your body grew invincible. Your skin was luminescent, unbreakable, and catching disease was impossible. Your senses were amplified and readjusted. From the stories I heard most people were able to read minds after using Violet, sometimes they could move things without lifting a finger, on rare occasions they got special abilities no one else possessed.

Violet was the drug everyone in the world craved but few could afford. The catch- it had to be reinjected every year.

After Violet was created it spawned the spread of artificial labs in every major city, causing metropolises to become even larger, and that much more exclusive. The rest of us who couldn’t afford to stay in areas surrounding the labs were pushed towards the outskirts. My Grandpa used to joke it was out with the poor and in with the rich-he wasn’t wrong though. As soon as money started pouring in, the poor were kicked on their ass like yesterday’s news, reduced to nothing but a dirty memory every city wished to be rid of.

Now, it was a dog eat dog type of world. While the wealthy got to afford life in a well guarded, pristine city, with access to the latest fashions, gourmet foods, and the most tempting serum in the world, the rest of us were condemned to a life on the bricks, or the Mortars.

Where old run down concrete met grime and brick. Where violence was the way most people interacted with each other. It was a place plagued by drugs, hunger, and sickness, but still, it was home. For me and my kid brother Josh, it was all we knew.

But one day I was going to get us out of there. I didn’t dream of living in that claustrophobic glass house of a city, but if living there meant I never had to worry again, I would.

My hands pulled at the white tulle skirt that clung to my body like a second skin. I had gotten it from Randy, my usual supplier, with a promise that this time I would make it back from the metro with three serums for him.

My eyes caught the guy in the baseball hat again; both of us walking in long strides towards the direction of Chrome Laboratory, the only difference being his fidgeting and my cool composure. He was going to get caught, I could feel it with every jerk of his head. If he got caught it was over; without a work permit or proof of residency, he’d be branded a hazard, posted across every security bulletin and denied access to residency or anything produced within the city. He’d be outcast, and for most of us in the Mortars, that’d mean death.

Sneaking in and hijacking serums was the only way any of us younger people made our living nowadays.

It was the way I made mine.

I couldn’t keep staring at him. If I showed him any extra attention they’d suspect me. I had to keep moving and remember what I was here for, who I was in this city.

I was no longer Jen from the Mortars; a twenty year old orphan. I was Jane from the Metro; on her way from the office after a long day of mundane clerical work.